


empty holes it fills

by Walutahanga



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, Multi, Not a Love Story, Polyamory, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Upir Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 15:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13593333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walutahanga/pseuds/Walutahanga
Summary: The thing is, Roman didn't love Miranda.





	empty holes it fills

The thing is, Roman didn’t love Miranda.

When she fell into his life, she seemed like a miracle. A convenient, Letha-shaped miracle.

His daughter needed a mother. More importantly, she needed a _human_ mother. Roman knew all too well the dangers of being raised by an upir. He needed someone to serve as a buffer between him and his child, for the times when his parental instincts took a less human form.

He’d studied Miranda with the calculated detachment of a farmer assessing stock. She was slim and blonde, echoing Letha in looks, yet different enough in personality to not feel like a cheap replacement.  The lactation was convenient. So was her lack of connections in town. If something were to… go wrong, it would be easy to make it look like she just packed up and moved on.

Best of all, she _loved_ the baby.  It was in her eyes and her smile, the utter joy when she looked at her. Roman might not possess humanity any longer, but he can value it in others.

His daughter deserves at least one person who loved her unconditionally. Someone other than a shrivelled up housekeeper and an undead father. He’d thought once that Peter…

…but that ship sailed a long time ago. Miranda will do. 

* * *

What he hadn’t counted on was how much _he_ enjoyed having Miranda around. How the sweet scent of her lingered in the mansion, as innocently alluring as Letha had been in her last months. It was pheromones, he knew. Just pheromones. His body responding to evolutionary instincts even older than the upir curse.

So fuck it. Why not. She certainly had no complaints about what they did, not even when he slept with other people.

“It doesn’t bother you,” he asked curiously once.

 “Not particularly,” she shrugged: “I think people expect things to be like the movies. Like there’s a formula to it, and if you follow the steps you get rewarded. It’s always seemed fake to me.”

“So you don’t believe in true love?” That was a surprise. He’d assumed Miranda, underneath her tough-girl exterior, was a closet romantic.

She was quiet for a few moments. “I believe in relationships,” she said finally. “I believe in trust and affection and loyalty. I believe you can build something decent and real with other people.” She glanced at him and asked warily: “What about you?”

“I know love.” The obsessive, caustic kind that clings and burns. The way his mother had loved him. The way he’d loved Letha. “It’s poison.”

So their arrangement went. He continued to sleep around outside the mansion. He suspected Miranda did the same on the rare nights she slept elsewhere, but she didn’t offer any details and he never asked. When they did sleep together, he enjoyed the cozy easiness of them, the understanding of two people in sync. It was less like having a girlfriend than a good friend he happened to have sex with. It was nice. He hadn’t had a friend since… in a very long time.

Miranda wasn’t quite Letha or Peter. She was, however, a soothing balm; a calm oasis he could sink into and rest.

* * *

Her fucking Peter, he never saw coming. Though perhaps he should have, given her commonalities with Letha.

It pissed him off. It aroused him.

The solution she offered was definitely not what Letha would have suggested though, and for the first time Roman saw her as something other than Letha’s shadow. Maybe with her, he could build something different with Peter. Maybe she could be a bridge rather a wall.

When Roman leaned over a spent Miranda to kiss Peter’s temple (an experimental prelude for things to come) Miranda’s heartbeat quickened only the slightest bit. He smelled pleasure and interest on her. Not the slightest flicker of surprise.

Roman kissed her then. “My generous girl,” he whispered into her hair, and in that moment, felt a deep, sincere warmth. It was not quite what he felt for Letha or Peter but he thought in time it could be real.

* * *

Roman and Peter pulled the two bodies out of the tank in Spivak’s basement, the faces melted and burned beyond recognition. They only knew Miranda by her tattoos.

While Peter covered the bodies, Roman waited for the grief to come. After all, he’d wanted Miranda. He’d had plans for her and Peter and Nadia. He’d thought he could wrap himself in domesticity and make sure the monster never got loose.

All he felt was a faint, aggrieved anger. A thwarted petulance.

“Say something,” Peter said finally.

“This is her fault.”

“Bullshit.”

“If she hadn’t jumped off that roof, none of this would have happened.”

“Fuck off. You don’t know that Spivak wouldn’t have gotten to her eventually anyway.”

Roman hissed at him half-heartedly, but let it go. After all, Peter didn’t know what Miranda’s absence had brought about.

If it had been Miranda in the mansion that day instead of Annie, Roman was convinced he’d never have killed Destiny. He would have called an ambulance and explained himself to Peter and everything would have been okay. Sure Peter would have been mad, and Roman would have had to smack him down a few times to make him listen to reason, but he’d have gotten over it. It would have all worked out. 

This was not how they were supposed to end, Roman and Peter standing over Miranda’s rotting corpse on a dirty basement floor. It was untidy and incomplete and just _frustrating_.

“It should have been different,” Roman muttered, yanking at the tarp. “Should have all been fucking different.”

**Author's Note:**

> It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,  
> Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.  
> It lies behind stars and under hills,  
> And empty holes it fills.  
> It comes first and follows after,  
> Ends life, kills laughter.  
> \- The Hobbit


End file.
